Bitcoin price will hit $550K, says Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood

• Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood says many institutional investors are yet to enter the crypto space

• She says institutional investors continue to allocate huge chunks of their investment into BTC and that Bitcoin price will surge by $500,000 if hedge funds and other big-money investors put just 5% of their money into the asset.

Cathie Wood, the American investor whose popularity has skyrocketed over the past year due to her investment strategies, has once again reiterated her Bitcoin price call.

It’s not the first time Wood is predicting how high the cryptocurrency could surge. In September, the Ark Invest CEO expressed a similar bullish view on Bitcoin, saying its value will eventually surge to $550,000 over the next few years.

She has repeated the call in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, indicating this time that she believes the entry of big money into the crypto space will catapult BTC by $500k.

Wood noted that institutions only need to allocate 5% or so of their investment into Bitcoin to see the pioneer cryptocurrency push another $500,000 from current prices.

According to her, such an allocation to major portfolios need not happen overnight, but slowly with time. Eventually, she sees BTC’s price reaching her earlier prediction of $550k, a scenario that calls for a tenfold increase in the cryptocurrency’s value.

The “holy grail” of asset allocation

Wood suggested that the crypto sector has continually attracted huge capital inflows from hedge funds and other institutional investors, something likely to work in favour of Bitcoin.

According to her, the crypto’s pull today is down to investor appetite for opportunities other than stocks, bonds, or other such traditional investment tools.

According to the investor, crypto currently fits into that category of asset class being sought by institutions. This “new asset class” she told CNBC, has Bitcoin and Ethereum as the two most invested.

As investors seek new ways to diversify their portfolios, Wood said the key lies in identifying that which has low correlations to current positions.

She pointed out that this is how investment managers achieve diversification, calling such a realization the “holy grail” of asset allocation.